'AI Blood Diagnosis' Noeul Submits KOSDAQ Preliminary Listing Review... K-Bio IPO Golden Era

MyLab.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Seon-ae] Artificial intelligence (AI) blood diagnostic platform company 'Noeul (NOUL)' has begun preparations for listing on the KOSDAQ market.

According to the Korea Exchange on the 30th, Noeul submitted a preliminary listing examination application to the KOSDAQ Market Division of the Korea Exchange on the 26th. The lead underwriters are Korea Investment & Securities and Samsung Securities. The number of shares to be listed (planned) is 10,425,050, and the number of shares to be offered (planned) is 1.5 million. Previously, it passed the technical evaluation for KOSDAQ technology special listing, aiming for listing within this year.

Noeul, established in 2015, is an in vitro diagnostic medical device company. Its representative product is the blood diagnostic platform 'miLab (Mylab)', developed using NGSI solid staining technology. It automates the entire blood diagnostic process from sample preparation, staining, image capturing, to AI analysis, enabling rapid and accurate infection detection without expert assistance. It can be used not only for infectious diseases like malaria but also for diagnosing and treating various febrile diseases and cancers. The miLab platform has proven its technological capability by being published in papers at various international academic conferences, including the world’s top journal Nature. It has filed and registered a total of 76 patents in the United States, Europe, China, and Japan. Noeul is actively pursuing global market entry based on this foundation.

Noeul also completed pre-IPO equity investment. Recently, it secured 13 billion KRW in funding just one year after receiving 25 billion KRW in Series B investment in June last year. The funding was led by Smilegate Investment, Daily Partners, Albatross Investment, and Premier Partners, who made follow-up investments. The cumulative funding amount from pre-Series A to this pre-IPO is 40 billion KRW. Noeul’s largest shareholder is the overseas unlisted company MSEED INC, holding a 30% stake.

Meanwhile, bio companies continue to perform strongly in this year’s initial public offering (IPO) market. Starting with SK Bioscience, companies such as SD Biosensor, HK Inno.N, VigenCell, Vuno, and Deepnoid have attracted attention by achieving successful listings. This trend is analyzed to be driven by expanded venture capital (VC) investment and the Korea Financial Supervisory Service’s technology special listing system. According to the Korea Venture Capital Association, in the first half of 2021, new VC investments (approximately 3.073 trillion KRW) had the highest proportion in bio at 26.2%. Additionally, according to the Korea Exchange, out of 100 domestic technology special listing companies, 76 are bio companies. Last year, there were a total of 25 technology special listing companies, of which 17 were bio companies, showing that bio companies are gaining attention in the listing market. The industry evaluates that bio companies with guaranteed growth potential are laying the foundation for development through IPOs, accelerating the growth of the Korean bio industry.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.